Why raiding sucks

This is in response to Syp’s post on Bio Break. I felt my response was a little long to post in the comments so here it is.

Raiding is the bane of my gaming existence. At some point in all MMOs you are forced to do a raid in order to progress. Now it is not the raids that I dislike, most of them are fun and challenging the first few times but it is my life that hates raiding.

It never fails I will start a raid and the cat will throw up, kid will throw up, wife will throw up, wife will want to “talk”, or some other life happens. Now these life things always take precedence over the game, regardless of my wife claiming that she has to say my name 10 times to get my attention, I claim it is not more than 3 times but that is for a different blog post. So to avoid the fight that takes place after me saying “Honey I’m a little busy”, I just avoid raiding all together unless I am home alone.

So eventually I am force to choose either proceeding in the game by raiding and thus ignoring my family or starting a new game/character. Now I know for a lesser man it would not take very many times of reaching the cap and starting over before you choose to just quit and play a game that does not punish you for having a life, like any console game. But I am a glutton for punishment and I need material to write about. So I continue to see this problem with every game I play.

Raiding sucks because people that may need to go AFK randomly cannot participate in it. It is also the main form of advancement after you reach the level cap. There needs to be a way for people that cannot participate in raids to see the content and continue progress. I would thoroughly enjoy seeing some of the best content in the game even if I did not get some phat loot. Just let me explore the game at my own pace and with my own set of friends.

I would love to be able to raid but as life continues to get more complex I just don’t see it happening.